After completing the Full Moon last year – a 26.2 mile marathon for the charity Walk the Walk – staff nurse Yvonne Cairns was raring to go again in 2018. But in February 2018 the 36 year old, who is also a National Dementia Champion, had a stroke at work.
A couple of weeks after leaving hospital Yvonne was feeling pretty low, but her friend Jill Thomson, who works in the Acute Assessment Unit at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, decided to step in and help her on the road to recovery. The two began training again, gently at first, and within a few weeks Yvonne was on the mend and back at work and preparing for the Moonwalk.
This year they were invited to the VIP tent as special guests before the walk kicked off, and they made it to the finishing line without a blister in sight, Yvonne dressed as Mickey Mouse and Jill as Minnie to tie in with the Hollywood theme.
The Moonwalk also attracted some of the male species. NHS Forth Valley Webmaster David Anderson from the Communications Department and Steven O’Hara from IT, looking rather like the Ladyboys of Edinburgh, in their glittery bras to tie in with the Glitz and Glamour theme. They described the Moonwalk as hard going, especially on the back, and said they were very tempted to take the fork in the road at 13 miles which would have ended the Half Moon challenge. Between them they raised more than £1,000 for breast cancer charities.
